What Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh & West Bengal claim is huge GST theft may be elimination of VAT-era tax evasion. An analysis conducted by three states — West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra — suggests that taxpayers may have under-reported value of goods entering these states by nearly Rs 2.6 lakh crore during July 2017 to March 2018. Government officials and tax experts, however, point out that a large part of this is likely to be the amount of tax evasion — in the pre-goods and services tax (GST) or VAT era — that has, in fact, been stopped by the implementation of GST. The analysis, discussed in the last GST Council meeting, was based on a comparison between declarations in the ‘C’ from in 2016-17 with those under Integrated GST (I-GST is applicable on interstate sales). With the C-form sales of goods between states much higher — Rs 2.6 lakh crore across these three states — compared to what was declared in July-March under I-GST, these three states argue the d...